Generations of Peacebuilding: A Call to Giving for the Future

Rachel Nagin is a second generation WILPF member who currently serves on the national communications committee.  We are delighted to announce our new WILPF-US United Nations Representative, Rachel Nagin. Rachel will work with our current UN Representative, Abigail Ruane, for a smooth transition during the month of December. There is an opening for one more UN Representative and two openings for Youth UN Representatives. If you are interested or know of any interested candidates, please consider completing the nominating form on our website.

For nearly 100 years, you and our foremothers in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have created and nurtured a worldwide social movement for just and sustainable peace, working locally and globally to strengthen civil society and prevent war. Thank you for your work, and your contributions over the last year. We ask you to renew your generosity so that this work can continue into the future.

In 2013, your generosity resulted in:

Participatory workshops held with WILPF’s civil society partners in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen in preparation for the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). A delegation of 12 WILPF-sponsored participants from the MENA region participated in a full week of the CSW from 2-9 March 2013, culminating with a public side event hosted by the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations on 8 March, International Women’s Day, to discuss how the reinforcement of patriarchal power structures enable the continuation of violence in the region. This international delegation was supported by the efforts of six WILPF U.S. members participating in the Local2Global program and 24 college women enrolled in WILPF’s Practicum in Advocacy Program.

The successful negotiation of a robust and comprehensive Arms Trade Treaty, including a legally-binding provision on preventing armed gender-based violence. The treaty requires exporting state parties to assess the risk that the weapons being transferred would facilitate gender-based violence by either state or non-state actors, and not to make the transfer if there is such a risk. WILPF-US and around the world continues to work for the ratification and implementation of this treaty, adopted in April 2013. The linkage between the arms trade and gender-based violence was subsequently acknowledged by the Human Rights Council in its adoption of a landmark resolution on the human rights consequences of the arms trade.

The presentation of “shadow reports” to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by WILPF activists from the United Kingdom, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia during their countries’ periodic reviews. In considering relevant data on women’s equality data through WILPF’s unique “women, peace and security” lens, the CEDAWcommittee’s concluding recommendations in all instances point toward a fresh understanding and clear articulation of SCR1325 enforcement and applicability. Particularly important for WILPF is the CEDAW committee’s agreement that the provisions of SCR1325 apply to domestic as well as international armed conflicts.                                                

In addition to supporting the global work of our secretariat and of WILPF sections everywhere, your gift to WILPF does much more. Here are a few examples of what WILPF has been doing in our own country:

• Des Moines WILPF exposed the hypocrisy of the World Food Prize Foundation and their promotion of chemical-laden industrial agriculture, including GMOs, with a week of protests and educational events, providing a platform for farmer-activists from Haiti/Brazil and Kenya to gather support for their rebellion against Monsanto.
• WILPF Branches from California to Vermont continue advocacy (and direct action) to close nuclear power plants, resulting over the past year in the decommissioning of three aging and damaged reactors and preventing the licensing of another.
• Members of our Earth Democracy committee challenged their colleagues in the Move to Amend coalition to look beyond the immediate goal of amending the US constitution and began building a global movement for People, Peace and the Planet by co-convening an Earth Democracy Conference at the Democracy Convention in Madison, WI. WILPF members shared the Challenging Corporate Power study guide and organized numerous plenaries to explore practical applications of the Principle of Guardianship for Future Generations to safeguard earth rights and advance the green transformation of our economy and technologies.
• WILPF-US started planning for its second hundred years with a retreat organized by its “transition team” for board members and emerging new leaders, yielding the beginnings of a blue print for the future currently circulating for comment at regional membership meetings and by individual members on line at http://100years.wilpfus.org/.

Throughout the year, the impact of your gift to WILPF is visible in vigils and teach-ins, in workshops and film screenings, in rallies and acts of civil disobedience.

Thank you for enabling this work.

Looking forward to 2014 and beyond, WILPF-US has committed to:

• strengthening the Local2Global and Practicum in Advocacy at the United Nations programs over the next three years with a special emphasis on intergenerational mentoring;
• participating in and financially supporting a hemispheric Women, Peace and Security strategy meeting in Bogota, Colombia;
• engaging as many WILPF members as possible in supporting the Nuclear Abolition Treaty, which currently has the endorsement of 125 U.N. member states—but not the US. 

Your renewed financial commitment will ensure that these plans come to fruition and that WILPF’s highly successful mini-grant program continues to expand.

WILPF’s work impacts communities, corporations and governments around the world and across the United States. That impact depends on your generosity.Please give as much as you are able at this exciting time of organizational renewal and transformation.

P.S. We’re grateful you have made WILPF your political “home;" your intellectual and energetic contributions are what keep WILPF relevant. Please make sure we have your current email so that you can be promptly informed about new WILPF initiatives and projects as they unfold. 

Top photo: Audley Greene, Robin Lloyd, Pat O’Brien and Ruth Weizenbaum have made WILPF their political home for years. Here they pose with a sculpture of WILPF founding member Lola Maverick Lloyd following the first performance of “Women, War and Peace: Robin speaks to her grandmother” at a house party sponsored by Audley on November 16, 2013. If you’re interested in booking this presentation that includes an in depth, guided discussion of the women who attended the Hague Conference in 1915 linking their ideas to WILPF’s current campaigns, please contact Robin at robinlloyd8@gmail.com.